Forza Horizon 6 Review: A Polished Japanese Drive with Familiar Roads
Speeding through Shibuya Crossing in a souped-up kei truck, with Babymetal blaring from the stereo, it is easy to fall in love with the fantasy Forza Horizon 6 is selling. The game presents a slick, polished, and consistently fun sandbox where recognizable locations are stitched together into a vast open world. Players can choose from a huge number of cars picked from multiple eras and disciplines, engaging in a seemingly endless suite of events to expand their garage.
However, this is not a revolution. It is a continuation of what the series has been doing for over a decade. Like every Forza Horizon before it, this title is another big, bombastic racing festival featuring mostly the same event icons on a different map. It is a game of small, marginal changes—sometimes meaningful, but always subtle. If you have played any of the previous games, you inherently know how this one will feel. It is the same, only now it is set in Japan.
A New Setting, Same Formula
Fortunately, the setting makes for one of the better locations in the series' history. As a collection of biomes, it is less varied and dramatic than Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico, instead feeling more reminiscent of Forza Horizon 4’s version of the UK. It turns out that island nations with a rich automotive legacy are a great fit for what the series is trying to do—giving plenty of opportunities for Playground Games to express its deep love of car culture.
The map is highly interpretive—a patchwork of real-world Japanese locations strewn across the game world:
- Hokkaido's flower gardens are located south of Toyama's snow walls.
- Irabu Bridge—in reality part of the Okinawa prefecture—lives northeast of Tokyo.
- Tokyo itself is truncated down to its most recognizable sites and expressways.
The point isn't realism, it's vibes. The various points of interest—be it the multi-story spiral of the Kawazu-Nanadaru Loop Bridge or the scenic view of Mt. Fuji from the Izu Skyline—are all in service of a memorable driving experience. Whether you are looking for something pretty to look at as you build skill chains or something challenging to master, the environment supports the drive. While there are still many miles of generic country roads, there is enough flavor throughout to do justice to the setting.
Refined Progression and Touge Battles
A small but somewhat notable change for Forza Horizon 6 is the splitting of campaign progression into two separate ranking systems:
- Festival Ranking: The traditional progression tied to the main festival events.
- Discover Japan: A separate ranking for extracurricular activities dotted around the map, including street races and sidequest stories.
As you tick things off the checklist for Discover Japan, you earn points and rank up to unlock new barn find rumors. This serves as an effective way to stop the general shape of the campaign from feeling homogeneous. It is not revelatory by any means, but as a small nudge toward a more purposeful reward path, it works.
The best activities in the Discover Japan path are the new touge events—head-to-head races down narrow, winding mountain roads. These are tight, technical routes that make for an enjoyable challenge. Limiting the competition to just a single opponent keeps the action focused more on the driving than on fighting against the pack.
Side Quests and Repetitive Dialogue
The sidequests range from day trips to notable locations to a whistle-stop tour of Japan's drifting scene. Thematically they are fine, but they suffer from repetition. Most involve driving to a place, watching a short cutscene, and then completing a concluding challenge for a rating out of three stars. Common tasks include:
- Doing a big jump.
- Getting to the checkpoint before the time runs out.
- Going fast through a speed trap.
- Reaching checkpoints while keeping speed above 80mph.
If you have played any of the previous games, you will have done all of this many times before. While it is not a major issue—going fast in cars is, after all, why we are here—it is made worse by how bland the dialogue is. It is all trite platitudes and empty positivity. Everyone is having an amazing time, which they are constantly explaining to you with the same superficial tone that a local supermarket's in-store radio uses to tell you about the latest deal on tinned tomatoes.
Tuning and Technical Details
The best series of quests focuses more on the cars, featuring a local mechanic asked to custom-tune a fleet of iconic Japanese vehicles for a festival parade. This involves a rotation of basic challenges with the added twist of driving the car both before and after it has been tuned. It is an effective showcase for the potential of the game's own tuning options, which let you dramatically alter the feel of a car—for instance, turning a usually skittish Mazda MX-5 into something that better holds traction for fast cornering.
The game attempts to use dialogue to explain the specific tweaks being made and the reasons behind them, but the amount of information imparted is dwarfed by the constant reinforcement of what a privilege it is to be there. It is peak second-screen gaming, words that simply wash over you in all their banal triviality.
Review Specifications
- What is it? The sixth sandbox racing game about a festival that encourages acts of vehicular recklessness.
- Release date: May 19, 2026
- Expect to pay: $70/£60
- Developer: Playground Games
- Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
- Reviewed on: Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAM, RTX 5070Ti
- Steam Deck: TBA
The Verdict
Seasons return to the map, though players did not get a full chance to see how drastically they alter the environment during the review period. Only the spring and summer seasons were available, including cherry blossoms. The seasonal playlist also was not enabled, leaving its full impact for later.
Yes, I am having fun. As always, the driving is peerless. The Forza Horizon 6 review confirms that while the formula is familiar, the execution in Japan remains one of the most stylish and satisfying open-world racing experiences available.
